Equitable Resources​ and Access

Equitable distribution of financial and other critical resources—including access to high-quality educators, college-preparatory curriculum, and support services—creates the foundation necessary for every child to succeed.

Learn More

Preparing all students to meet 21st century expectations requires an accompanying commitment to allocate sufficient money, people, and time to the challenge. Systems must ensure that funds are equitably distributed based on student and school need. Local and state-level officials, working with their communities, must also become responsible for the wise and efficient use of limited financial resources.

A commitment to equity must encompass the range of opportunities and resources critical to student success, including:

Ensuring all students are taught by educators who are fully prepared and supported throughout their career.

Providing students with access to a range of supportive services that ensure their health and well-being.

Funding schools in a way that is equitable, stable, and adequate to provide all students with a 21st century education.

Providing all students access to a high-quality college- and career-ready curriculum and up-to-date instructional materials and tools, including computers and related technology.

“Almost 1.5 million children are educated in the 47 most fiscally disadvantaged school districts across 16 states.”

While more than two-thirds of high school graduates enroll in college, nearly two-thirds of these students arrive on campus unprepared for college-level rigor. Instead of trying to solve this problem together, high schools and colleges typically operate in silos. The situation is entirely different in Long Beach, CA, where collaboration, from pre-k through college, is the watchword.

By Linda Darling-Hammond and Patricia Gandara | How we can create 21st century learning opportunities for all students? In this op-ed, authors argue that a wide range of structural inequalities contribute to ongoing learning and achievement gaps. They identify three high-leverage policy areas to promote equity and deeper learning: adequate and flexible K-12 funding based on pupil needs, educator standards that focus preparation programs on deeper learning, and more supports and fewer constraints to enable innovative instruction and assessment.

For decades, policy makers have treated those living in poverty as helpless and inept. The worse off the neighborhood, the less influence its residents have over their future. Rather than ask what would strengthen their communities, social services conduct “needs assessments” and agencies deliver solutions that seldom work. As the successes of Houston's Neighborhood Centers show, people who live in these communities must determine their own fate.

Our schools are among the most unequally funded in the industrialized world, with some states or districts spending more than double what others spend per pupil. Money properly spent on the right educational resources for students who need them the most — especially on well-qualified educators and keeping classes at reasonable sizes — can make a huge difference.

This forum was designed to spur dialogue among stakeholders—parents, education experts, community advocates, researchers, legal advocates, policymakers, and school leaders—in order to shift the public narrative on school choice from one that is politically polarizing to one that is focused on evidence-based solutions that can help ensure all children have access to quality educational opportunities, regardless of race, income, or ability.

In this webinar, co-hosted by the Learning Policy Institute and the National Urban League, we shared and discussed tools and resources designed to support advocates and policymakers as they work to leverage opportunities to inform and support continuous improvement across all schools as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is implemented.

Responding to growing interest in community schools among educators, community groups, and policymakers, LPI explores community schools as a strategy to advance equity and support student and family well-being and academic success. Our work is grounded in an in-depth analysis of 143 research studies on the impact of community schools on student and school outcomes and includes a variety of resources and tools to support understanding and implementation of this evidenced-based strategy.

The Learning Policy Institute and our partners at the Coalition for Community Schools, Communities In Schools, and the Center for American Progress hosted a conversation with leaders on community schools. Panelists discussed how to implement a community schools strategy at scale and how local and state education policy can support this crucial work.

On September 7, 2018, Policy Analysis for California Education and the Learning Policy Institute hosted Supporting the Whole Child: Practice, Policy, and Measurement, an event on how schools can be organized to support the whole child, which featured a series of panels with leading researchers, policymakers, and practitioners.

In partnership with the Stuart Foundation, the Forum for Youth Investment, and the Learning Policy Institute held a discussion on how to spark a Whole Child Challenge in communities across America. Ignited by Stuart Foundation’s President Jonathan P. Raymond's new book, Wildflowers: A School Superintendent’s Challenge to America, panelists built on themes that resonated with them in the book by sharing their stories and discussed how to place children at the center of every policy, every debate, and every decision made about K-12 education.

Pages

Featured Resources

In keeping with the Learning Policy Institute’s commitment to communicating high-quality research to inform education policy and practice, we have assembled a selection of reports by other organizations that address critical questions and issues in LPI’s core topic areas. This collection, which will be periodically updated, is part of our larger effort to provide policymakers, practitioners, and stakeholders with useful information as they seek to advance equitable and empowering learning for all students.

For decades, some politicians and pundits have argued that “money does not make a difference” for school outcomes. While it is certainly possible to spend money poorly, this viewpoint is strongly contradicted by a large body of evidence from rigorous empirical research. This document presents a brief explanation of the goal of school finance reforms, followed by summaries of the main bodies of evidence that illustrate how equitable and adequate school funding improves student outcomes.

This study of California’s recent major school finance reform, the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), is among the first to provide evidence of LCFF’s impacts on student outcomes. We found that LCFF-induced increases in school spending led to significant increases in high school graduation rates and academic achievement, particularly among children from low-income families. The evidence suggests that money targeted to students’ needs can make a significant difference in student outcomes and can narrow achievement gaps.

Sign up for our mailing list to stay up to date with the Learning Policy Institute.